Lorenzo Maria Pacini
The Twelve-Day War, targeted assassinations, and U.S.-Israeli strikes have replaced proxy violence.
Fewer attacks, but no less danger
The fifth annual report on terrorism in Iran, published by the Habilian Association and presented last August at the Center for Political and International Studies of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, presents a picture that at first glance appears contradictory. During the period examined, attacks on Iranian soil were cut in half and the number of victims fell by more than two-fifths; yet the Islamic Republic is facing the most intense phase of external military pressure in recent decades. This is not a statistical paradox to be corrected, but rather the document's most politically significant finding: the decline in terrorism does not reflect a decrease in violence directed against Iran, but rather a shift in its form.
First and foremost, a chronological misunderstanding must be cleared up. The "2025" in the title does not correspond to the Gregorian year: the report covers the year 1404 of the Iranian solar calendar, from March 21, 2025, to March 20, 2026, and the Western designation is a convention adopted to assist foreign readers. The time frame thus encompasses both the Twelve-Day War of June 2025 and the subsequent military escalation of the following winter - a circumstance that has a decisive impact on the interpretation of the figures.
In quantitative terms, the improvement is clear. The number of recorded terrorist attacks drops from 52 to 26, and the number of victims from 100 to 57 - a decrease of 50 percent and 43 percent, respectively. The data on victims, however, requires a less straightforward interpretation. The average number of deaths per attack rose from 1.92 to 2.20. Attacks have become less frequent, but when they do occur, they are, on average, slightly more deadly. The threat has decreased in number but intensified in severity.
The geographic picture reveals even more. Of the 26 recorded attacks, 22 occurred in Sīstān and Balūchestān, the southeastern province bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan: nearly 85 percent of the national total. In 2024, terrorist violence had affected six Iranian provinces and two foreign countries; in the following year, it remained confined to four provinces, with a single focal point. Within the Baluch region itself, however, the number of attacks fell from 36 to 22, a 39 percent decline.
This concentration helps shed light on the nature of the phenomenon. The terrorism that continues to plague Iran is not a widespread, homogeneous threat, but a problem with specific territorial roots, linked to the cross-border dynamics of Baluchistan. The border with Pakistan - approximately 1,000 kilometers long and difficult to control - the economic marginalization of a predominantly Sunni province within a Shi'a state, and the presence of armed and smuggling networks: these are the elements that create the space in which even small groups carry out rapid ambushes against patrols, checkpoints, and local representatives of the state.
Insurgency and risks
The main culprit remains Jaysh al-ʿAdl, the "Army of Justice." According to the report, the group carried out or claimed responsibility for 14 of the 26 operations and was responsible for 28 of the 57 fatalities: 53.8 percent of the attacks and 49.1 percent of the deaths. Here, too, a comparison with the previous year is instructive. The group had been attributed with 27 attacks: its activity has nearly halved, though it remains the leading group among those hostile to Tehran, with an average fatality rate on the rise.
It is worth recalling what Jaysh al-ʿAdl is, because its dual nature explains much of Iran's difficulties. Founded in 2012 from the ashes of Jundallah - the Baluchi group decapitated in 2010 with the capture and execution of its leader Abdolmalek Rigi - the group combines Baluchi nationalism, Salafi-inspired Sunni Islamism, and separatist demands. Tehran, like Washington, designates it a terrorist organization; the group, however, presents itself as a defender of the Baloch minority's rights against state discrimination. According to Iranian authorities, its rear bases are located on the Pakistani side of Balochistan, a circumstance that has already caused serious friction between the two neighbors in the past, culminating in reciprocal cross-border attacks in January 2024.
At the end of 2025, Jaysh al-ʿAdl announced the formation of a broader coalition, the "People's Fighters Front," which would bring it together with other Baluchi groups. Habilian interprets the move primarily as a rebranding, useful for circumventing legal classifications and restrictions or for projecting an image of renewed organizational capacity to the outside world; rhetoric and methods, he observes, have remained the same. This is a methodologically sound caution. The emergence of an umbrella organization may signal a strengthening or an attempt to mask a weakening, and the available operational data are not yet sufficient to decide between the two hypotheses.
The composition of the victims sheds light on another characteristic of contemporary Iranian terrorism. Over 75 percent of the dead belong to the police force, the military, or the security apparatus. Excluding from the tally the eight Pakistani workers killed in Sīstān va Balūchestān by a Pakistani Balochi separatist group, the percentage rises to about 88 percent, nearly identical to the 89 percent of the previous year. The targets are not large civilian gatherings, but rather patrols, border posts, Basīj militiamen, security personnel, and local institutional figures.
This has not spared the civilian population. Among the most serious incidents, the report highlights the July 26 assault on the courthouse in Zāhedān - where a seven-month-old infant and a sixty-year-old Baluchi woman were also killed - and the December attack on the Fahraj checkpoint in Kermān, which claimed the life of a sixteen-year-old boy. The predominantly military selection of targets coexists with consequences that nonetheless affect anyone within the radius of the armed action.
The methods of attack are also changing. More than 69 percent of incidents consist of direct attacks with firearms, which account for 87.7 percent of the casualties. There have been no suicide bombings or inghimāsī operations - raids in which the attackers fight to the death. This marks a significant shift from the period when jihadist terrorism relied on suicide attacks with high symbolic and media impact, such as the Islamic State's attacks on the Parliament and Khomeini's mausoleum in 2017. Groups active in the southeast now prefer ambushes against vehicles, shootings, and targeted assassinations - actions that are less costly and less complex to organize.
This shift should not automatically be interpreted as a sign of strength. On the contrary, it may indicate a reduced capacity to plan complex operations. The same report attributes part of the credit to Iranian security measures: strikes against bases and hideouts, the identification of cells and explosive caches, and, on the western front, the security agreement with Iraq, which has restricted the room for maneuver of several organizations. The temporary resurgence of the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) - limited to three closely spaced attacks without developing into a sustained campaign - confirms the trend toward brief flare-ups rather than sustained offensives.
The statistical breakdown between Washington and Tel Aviv
In 1404, Israel and the United States were removed from the statistical list of perpetrators of terrorist acts against Iran. It would be a gross mistake to interpret this data as a reduction in hostile action by the two powers, and the document itself explains the reason. In 2023 and 2024, Habilian had attributed eight and nine terrorist operations, respectively, to Israel, including killings of Iranian citizens and personnel abroad. During the year under review, that pressure did not cease; it shifted in nature, taking the form of open warfare.
Window 1404, in fact, contains two military conflicts. The first is the Twelve-Day War of June 2025, launched on June 13 by the Israeli operation Rising Lion against nuclear sites, military installations, and regime leaders, and culminating on June 22 in direct U.S. intervention against the facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan, prior to the ceasefire mediated by Oman. The second is the escalation of the winter of 2025-2026, which, according to available accounts, shifted the target from nuclear infrastructure alone to the Iranian chain of command. The report's authors chose not to include in the regular series the assassinations carried out during these conflicts or the incidents related to the January unrest, both because of their number and because the data on the victims had not yet been consolidated. Targeted killings of political, military, and scientific leaders in their homes or at their workplaces are discussed in the text but classified under the category of conventional warfare so as not to alter the comparability of the historical series on terrorism.
The analytical implication is clear. Stating that attacks in Iran have decreased by 50 percent is not the same as stating that violence against the country has decreased. The picture that emerges is one of a shift: clandestine, indirect, and limited means are giving way to - or are being supplemented by - direct military pressure. The statistical decline in terrorism coincides with the intensification of the interstate conflict. The distinction between terrorism, covert operations, and conventional warfare thus becomes more important in statistical terms just as it becomes more blurred in strategic terms.
The double standard and the MEK issue
Habilian places this dynamic within the broader framework of what it calls the Western double standard. Approximately 23,000 Iranians have died in acts of terrorism over the course of nearly half a century, and, as Habilian's report denounces, the opportunity granted in the West to organizations responsible for violence in Iran to maintain structures, conduct political activities, and meet with institutional representatives is an unacceptable act that constitutes a serious political clash. The reference, at times explicit, is to the Mojāhedin-e Khalq (MEK).
The MEK was designated a terrorist organization by the United States as early as 1997 and by the European Union in 2002; it was subsequently removed from that list by the United Kingdom in 2008, by the European Union in 2009, and by the United States on September 28, 2012, when the State Department justified the decision by citing the group's renunciation of violence and the dismantling of its Iraqi base. That a group with such a past - including, as admitted by the State Department itself, involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s - has since built a dense network of political relationships in European capitals and in Washington is therefore a fact, not a propaganda construct. And it is curious that an organization that, until the very day before, was considered a terrorist group, should at some point be legitimized and even become a sort of "model" for Westerners in their anti-Iranian stance. This is a clear example of the West's exploitation of anti-Iranian terrorism, and it is certainly not the first time this has happened. The MEK continues to be, today, not only a problem within Iran but even more so in the West, where its activities are lauded by institutions.
The overall result is a country - Iran - where domestic terrorism appears more contained, while the strategic context has become more dangerous. This is a situation that can be better understood through the lens of the multipolar transition: the pressure on powers that challenge the unipolar order does not vanish when one tool loses its effectiveness; rather, it shifts to a different plane. For years, Iran's security has been simultaneously undermined by peripheral separatist movements, jihadist groups, covert operations, sabotage, and targeted assassinations attributed to foreign powers. Part of that arsenal has not been discarded, but rather supplemented by open warfare.
The question that remains open - and the one that truly matters - is whether external actors who failed to achieve their objectives through war will, in the post-ceasefire phase, return to relying on the capabilities of armed organizations nestled in Iran's peripheries. The answer will depend less on the statistics of terrorism than on the balance of power among the major powers in the region. It is there - and not in the statistics on attacks - that the Islamic Republic's actual level of security in the years to come will be determined.